On 18/04/2012 00:53, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
> (I said something similar to this on another list, but thought it
> might be useful here too):
>> I think it would be nice if we could produce more "professional" and
> "modern" looking RFCs that look more like our competition, that is,
> ITU and ISO documents. I don't understand why we need to be stuck in
> a 1960's lineprinter world, nor do I accept the notion that it is
> always better to explain things with words and not with pictures.
>+10
We tend to allow those that think in words unlimited scope and
complexity to express their thoughts, but constrain those that
think in pictures or maths only the most primitive forms of
expression.
The text equivalent of ascii art would be to limit the dictionary
to that of 10 year old and the sentence size to something like
120 chars.
Whilst it is correct to eliminate unnecessary complexity from a
spec (in both text and figs), we shy away from explaining
important subtleties if they require complex figs, providing
a few hints to the intelligent reader, and my concern is that we
may fundamentally be limiting what we can do by limiting the
languages that we provide ourselves as means of expression.
The RFC that Peter points to is a case in point. It is part
of a set of work that deals with a primitive type of virtual
network topology. VNTs are becoming more important
with time, and it is very difficult to express the overlay
of one topology on another, other than in the most trivial
cases with ascii as the art package.
- Stewart